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The National Crime Records Bureau, Ministry of Home Affairs publishes an annual report that details various prison statistics. The report presents “numbers and available capacity of different types of jails, strength and training of jail officials and prison budget and expenditure.” In addition, it also analyses the demographic profile of inmates, distribution of convict and under trial prisoners by offenses and sentences / periods of detention and deaths in jails.

In this blog post, I focus on the occupancy rate in prisons. The occupancy rate is calculated as <inmate population/total capacity*100> and a number over 100 implies overcrowding in prisons. For example, an occupancy rate of 115% means that if the total capacity of all prisons in India was 100 then there were 115 prisoners occupying them in 2010. The following spreadsheet details the occupancy rate in Indian prisons over a decade (2001-2010):

Click here to view spreadsheet in separate tab. (To download the data click on the link and go to “File”> “Download as”)

It’s easy to discern that prisons in India have consistently been overcrowded and while the occupancy rate has marginally declined over the last few years, it is still over 100%.

If you are wondering where these prisons are located, here are some prison maps (sourced from the same report):